The Art of Manliness - #235： The Curious Science of War

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast war has always

00:00:19.380 been a catalyst for technological innovations i mean there's nothing that will spur human

00:00:23.700 creativity and ingenuity quite like figuring out how to kill your enemies more effectively

00:00:27.880 and to keep them from killing you but besides refining the techniques of killing and defending

00:00:32.240 against human combatants militaries across time and culture have spent lots of money and energy

00:00:36.840 trying to figure out ways to make their soldiers more physically and psychologically robust to other

00:00:41.440 kind of battlefield perils like panic exhaustion and heat exposure and many of these discoveries

00:00:46.300 that military science have made in this quest to make soldiers sturdier have benefited the civilian

00:00:51.420 world as well well my guest today on the podcast did a first-hand investigation of the fascinating

00:00:55.880 history of military research and shared her findings in a highly readable and entertaining

00:01:00.400 book her name is mary roach and she's the author of grunt the curious science of humans at war and

00:01:05.700 today on the show mary gives us a look inside a whole bunch of cool stuff uh it goes on in military

00:01:11.140 research for example inside military fashion departments that create uniforms that keep

00:01:15.440 soldiers cool comfortable and protected from chemical weapons all while still looking good

00:01:19.940 she unpacks why diarrhea has always been one of the biggest threats in war and discusses why

00:01:25.300 conquering the need to sleep has been a goal of militaries around the world for ages really

00:01:30.060 fascinating show that gives you behind the scenes look at the military you probably haven't seen

00:01:34.860 before after the show check out the show notes at aom.is slash grunt for links to resources where

00:01:40.160 you can delve deeper into this topic

00:01:41.460 mary roach welcome to the show thank you uh so you've written several books a lot of popular books

00:01:52.380 about the science and research that goes on in different domains of life like sex or the afterlife

00:01:58.240 or human space travel and your latest is called grunt the curious science of the military so i'm curious

00:02:03.920 was there something in particular that led you down the re you know researching the research that goes

00:02:09.480 on in the military yeah it was kind of an odd path to this book i don't have any background in

00:02:17.040 military science or anybody in my family but i was reporting a story in india on the world's hottest

00:02:22.640 chili pepper the boops jolokia and that pepper the indian defense ministry had made a non-lethal

00:02:30.120 weapon out of it they'd made sort of a chili bomb for dispersing crowds and so i went over there to

00:02:35.440 report on that i went to the lab where they made this and while i was there they were working on

00:02:42.820 leech repellent there was some other lab that had done some sort of telepathy work i was like wow

00:02:49.420 military science is way more interesting than just weapons and i'm not a technology writer so i wasn't

00:02:56.920 interested in covering uh weapons and and defense department technologies for various reasons that

00:03:02.740 didn't appeal to me but uh the anyway that so that was where the kind of the seed was planted

00:03:09.940 from that trip and and then when i came home around that time a retired army pathologist

00:03:16.920 had written to me because he'd read i think probably stiff and uh he i brought up the topic of military

00:03:24.100 science and you know i said i think access will probably be a problem and he was very encouraging

00:03:29.540 and he said you know i think you should you should do it you should try it i can introduce you to people

00:03:33.940 at the morgue in dover um which is you know place that i had assumed would be difficult for a writer

00:03:41.580 to get access to so the combination of those two things happening within a couple of months um that

00:03:48.240 kind of led me down that road so yeah i mean what's interesting about your book because like when i think

00:03:53.960 military research i think darpa and like laser cannons um but you you highlight the military science that

00:04:01.320 goes on that's not involved with darpa or developing next generation weapons um and what i found

00:04:07.200 surprising was that there was like it seems like there was just tons of different research branches

00:04:11.860 in the military um for specific very specific uh facets of military life oh yeah yeah yeah like

00:04:20.000 military entomology i mean i'd never heard those two words put together military entomology um and and

00:04:28.180 and then you know you sort of assume oh military entomology that's something about putting little

00:04:32.540 cameras on bees or something but uh in fact it was like um you know mosquito repellent because

00:04:39.480 sometimes you know the malaria rates the malaria kills more soldiers than the bullets and bombs you

00:04:45.920 know or or um maggot therapy it it was it was surprising that these disciplines existed and then doubly

00:04:52.980 surprising to learn what was going on at them or in them yeah and they even had like a there's like a

00:04:59.500 research department that just is dedicated to military clothing and it's it's intense it's very

00:05:05.700 intense like what goes on there oh yeah yeah natick labs in massachusetts uh u.s army natick they yeah i

00:05:13.400 mean it's it's not just a lab it's like five labs there's the flame resistance lab and there's the

00:05:19.460 chemical shedding lab and there's the mosquito repelling part and then there's the how do you

00:05:27.640 keep all this stuff from washing off and how do you you know how do you get these things to come you

00:05:32.740 know work well together and you know just and then there's the design studio there's actually fashion

00:05:38.380 designers that have to put this stuff together i mean they're really more like engineers than designers

00:05:44.380 but they're definitely you know doing it with an eye toward does this make the soldiers feel okay

00:05:49.740 wearing this because if you feel like you look really stupid it's not good for morale so right

00:05:54.980 uniforms play a role in morale and so that's a concern so so yeah just an amazing amount of work

00:06:01.740 goes into this that outfit that you see these men and women wearing when they're walking through the

00:06:07.820 airport and is there any coordination between these different research departments or is it all very

00:06:12.220 it's pretty insular there's a tremendous amount of coordination because uh like in the case of a

00:06:19.740 uniform uh if you do something to a textile to make it flame resistant and that counteracts its ability

00:06:29.320 to shed chemical weapons or repel mosquitoes or it makes it non-breathable you know then then

00:06:39.500 everything kind of falls apart so everything you know all of these different technologies have to

00:06:43.140 play well together and the they also everything is tested to work with other things which is kind

00:06:48.460 of the biggest challenge of it is making sure one department's development doesn't mess up

00:06:56.100 another department's invention you know yeah that makes sense yeah that makes sense so uh throughout

00:07:02.140 the book you you uh each chapter is dedicated to a different facet of military research and um one chapter

00:07:08.540 is about the research that's gone on in making vehicles that can withstand blasts from ieds uh in the wars

00:07:17.760 that are going on in afghanistan iraq um so can you explain how military research are trying to figure out

00:07:23.700 what happens to the human body in a vehicle that set off that sets off an ied sure yeah um the yeah the

00:07:33.560 military's challenge uh with vehicles is that they tend you know they show up with the vehicle from the last

00:07:39.680 conflict the last war and frequently the weapons have changed and then and in iraq and afghanistan you had

00:07:47.340 like you said you had well first you had roadside bombs and then the insurgents started burying them in the roadway

00:07:53.460 and so they the military needed a better vehicle and because humvees were really not cutting it it was bad

00:08:02.360 and so so so you've got these contractors who are saying here here's my prototype vehicle it's great

00:08:07.660 it'll save everyone's life well how do you know that well there's no um normally you know like in the

00:08:13.820 automotive industry you can put a crash test dummy in there but the crash test dummies for the automotive

00:08:19.360 industry don't work because automobiles crash head-on or this or if the side impact there's they're not designed

00:08:26.780 for a blast coming up from below that smashes the bottoms of passengers seats and their pelvises and

00:08:33.060 messes up their backs which is what happens when you have a blast go off right underneath so you know

00:08:39.340 there's certain things they knew right away they could do like um you know a v-shaped or a double v-shaped

00:08:44.660 chassis which would deflect the energy off to the side rather than slamming up into this flat

00:08:49.240 chassis that would then transmit all the energy into the bottoms of people's seats and their butts

00:08:54.340 so you know there's certain things that certainly would help right away but in order to know what was

00:08:59.980 you know really ultimately going to happen to people in the vehicle they needed a crash test dummy so

00:09:05.140 they're actually designing one which is a big undertaking you know the automotive industry did this work

00:09:10.060 back in the 60s and it's done with cadavers where you you to calibrate the dummy you expose cadavers to

00:09:17.520 certain uh to to incrementally to different uh amounts of blast energy there's a you know big

00:09:23.240 rig with a buried explosive out at aberdeen proving ground and the cadavers are sitting in seats up on a

00:09:29.480 platform and um then they're autopsied after the explosion and it's very it sounds really gory but

00:09:37.700 it's not if you watch it on video it's you know these two guys wearing full body lycra suits sitting in

00:09:42.860 chairs that look like they took a speed bump too fast it's only when you really slow it down you see

00:09:47.680 how i mean everything happens so quickly that you know it's too quickly for the body to respond and

00:09:54.140 so you get tears and breakages and bones and things like that um anyway so that is what's underway so

00:10:01.780 that hopefully there'd be you know when when this mannequin test dummy is completed it's a way it would

00:10:09.860 be a way to quickly evaluate a vehicle uh to make sure that the injuries to the people inside are

00:10:19.080 going to be minor or non-existent not serious or fatal yeah and the thing that surprised me is they

00:10:25.420 used cadavers like human cadavers in the testing because you know i've always heard okay well they've

00:10:29.640 used like pigs or like because they mimic the human body right um that was yeah right well yeah pigs

00:10:38.440 you know um pigs are are closest to the human body but they're they don't move in the same way i mean

00:10:46.140 even you know if you if you look at you know the slow motion footage of somebody sitting in a seat

00:10:52.960 with a blast underneath um there's a lot of flailing of the limbs you know and a pig has really short

00:10:59.620 limbs i mean for that kind of work uh a pig wouldn't really give you much good information you know

00:11:07.600 their necks their heads don't move on their necks the same way a lot of it's a lot of flailing that

00:11:11.860 happens really quickly and damages you know the spine and the limbs and that wouldn't that wouldn't

00:11:18.900 work um so yeah they could have the automotive industry did the exact same thing in the 60s using

00:11:24.400 human cadavers just you know going through the different at different speeds what kind of injuries

00:11:30.380 would this create you know so that you know the the test dummy only can tell you how much force

00:11:36.820 or how much strain you know you need the cadaver work to tell you well what does that force or

00:11:41.080 strain actually do is it a minimal injury or is it a fatal injury right so yeah um and you know the

00:11:47.840 cadaver work has been a big deal i mean the military doesn't undertake that work in a cavalier way

00:11:56.940 at this point you now have to have something like six months of approval process all the way up to congress

00:12:02.780 has to sign off on the use of the cadaver in in any um you know anything that would expose the body to

00:12:12.460 something like uh an explosion right and again it's like an explosion from way below it's not like you

00:12:20.540 are dismembering a body it's it's yeah and i mean it sounds it sounds ghastly and people kind of freak

00:12:28.180 out when they hear it but it's not not including generals yeah well you talk about in the book like

00:12:32.780 yeah when the generals found out what they wanted they were they were pretty reluctant to uh sign off

00:12:37.020 on it yeah um but i mean has the research uh made the vehicles better to withstand ied explosions yes

00:12:44.220 since the start of the war yeah oh yeah yeah i mean the the the strikers and the mraps are way better

00:12:51.660 than humvees yeah i mean a humvee you know it's fine if somebody's just shooting a gun at you but

00:12:59.700 for rpgs and ieds they were not up to the task and um yes these vehicles are much much better

00:13:08.380 yeah they're much better the problem is you can't roll them out instantly and in the time it takes to

00:13:14.220 get them test them get them procure them um you know people are being blown up so it's not ideal

00:13:22.120 but you know it can't really happen instantly so uh one of the things you talk about talk about in

00:13:28.300 the book is that uh the military has gotten really good at saving lives you know injuries or wounds

00:13:34.520 that would have been you know lethal you know 20 years ago we can save that person now but as a

00:13:40.020 consequence uh we have you know more individuals with ptsd amputations you know individuals with

00:13:46.280 uh prosthetics and like the prosthetics have gotten a lot better um because of the the wars in

00:13:51.760 afghanistan and iraq which has helped civilians as well but another area an injury that no one never

00:13:57.120 talks about but that the military is actually researching is it is an injury that is to a soldier's

00:14:02.180 genitalia and i didn't i mean i when i thought about i was like of course that would happen if you

00:14:06.060 were uh blown up by an ied in your vehicle yeah so i'm curious how widespread is the injury among

00:14:13.540 vets in the iraq and afghanistan wars to their to their genitalia um the the figure that i was given

00:14:20.820 um for the and i'm i can't remember i think it was operation during freedom anyway anyway it was like

00:14:27.980 for for 18 000 amputations 300 genital injuries so it's still a small number obviously

00:14:34.780 um the first thing that gets blown up is your foot you know the higher up you go the bigger the

00:14:41.600 explosion has to be so uh and for a long time and even now still sometimes but uh for you know for

00:14:48.800 many decades of military conflict if the explosion was so big that it would reach the pelvic region you

00:14:54.720 didn't survive so now like you said they're now people are surviving um but it's still um a small

00:15:00.560 number compared to more conventional injuries to the limbs and uh how does the these sort of

00:15:06.880 injuries affect a vet's life after the war oh it's it's it's um well depending on um

00:15:17.200 yeah i mean it's a it's a it's devastating in a variety of ways i mean you like the guy that i talked

00:15:25.040 to who had um stepped on an ied and he had damaged both legs missing part of both legs

00:15:33.320 and some damage to the penis specifically to the urethra um he he said you know when he's waiting for

00:15:41.160 the medevac helicopter he he said he said i said this half jokingly i said if my penis is gone just

00:15:49.280 leave me here and he said you know i wasn't serious but on the other hand you know i haven't

00:15:54.100 had kids and i want something to do that with and um also just something like you know they were

00:16:00.480 repairing his urethra and they could have done this thing where they just thread it through the taint

00:16:06.520 right you know the space between your penis and your butt um but then you got to pee sitting down

00:16:12.420 you know and and like that's a big deal i mean it's like it's easy to dismiss something like that and

00:16:17.800 like oh big deal you know as long as you can walk um but but then you know on top of that

00:16:22.840 how it affects your relationship i mean it's hard enough for families to get through the aftermath of

00:16:32.140 a serious combat injury when it's just you know relearning to walk or getting used to prosthetic

00:16:38.180 you know but but when it's you know it also involves your sex life you know that that's that's

00:16:42.940 huge and it's something that it's too easy to dismiss it as a lifestyle factor um and it isn't

00:16:48.920 just genital injuries it's like if somebody's lost part of both limbs and a hand well what sexual

00:16:56.480 positions work you know like how do you have sex or you know there's also there are resources that

00:17:01.160 kind of address this stuff in a really straightforward way but there's not a lot of people who are on staff

00:17:08.220 at walter reed to share that information and there should be there should be a couple people that's

00:17:13.060 just what they do it should be just you know that you make an appointment with this person who says

00:17:17.700 you know it's going to take some adjustment but you still you can still have a great sex life

00:17:21.560 yeah here's a couple things you could buy here's a couple things you could try

00:17:25.060 you know just just talk about it in a matter of fact way in the military

00:17:28.440 you know been a little uncomfortable with that and um has you know needs to kind of get up to speed

00:17:35.680 on making those people part of yeah making those people part of the staff and part of the process

00:17:42.640 right and also the drugs that veterans take you know make it harder to get erections antidepressants

00:17:48.220 and painkillers and that does a number on your sex life too so um yeah yeah like one of the themes

00:17:57.120 in your book seems like the military's gotten really good at keeping soldiers alive um after you know

00:18:02.360 after a severe but they don't they don't they haven't really spent much time like okay what

00:18:06.280 what after that right like what what do we do with these guys after that point

00:18:10.900 yeah exactly and i think that's um you know i mean it's understandable that the priority is to keep

00:18:19.140 them alive but i think you know there may have been some underestimation of the long-term

00:18:25.020 after effects and and how important it is to address that yeah and in your book uh you were

00:18:31.780 talking about how the military um is experimenting with uh penis transplants and they and like you

00:18:39.000 mentioned in the book it was like february 2016 like they're yeah they're about to like they actually

00:18:42.860 did one not it wasn't the military it was some other group but like that's been done now

00:18:46.780 yeah it was at mass general massachusetts general hospital they did it there was a um a cancer

00:18:53.320 patient um the the johns hopkins the one that i wrote about in the book was a johns hopkins i mean

00:18:59.520 the the cadaver work was being done and uh their patient and they have somebody who's a recipient

00:19:07.460 who's ready he's he's a veteran i haven't spoken to him but um and they were still waiting for a match

00:19:16.640 they're still um that hasn't happened yet but um yeah no it happened it the first uh the first u.s

00:19:26.660 transplant happened i guess it was two weeks before the book came out yeah and did the any like any of

00:19:31.760 the military research or surgeries like have an influence in it or was that something kind of

00:19:36.480 completely cordoned off well the the um the cadaver lab that i went to where they were working out some

00:19:43.500 of the details of which arteries to reattach like which ones were the most important that was um

00:19:49.660 they were those guys were getting some milk some funding from the defense department because i you

00:19:54.020 know obviously this is a something that would benefit a lot of veterans but um so what was the question

00:20:01.340 well i'm just saying i was curious uh uh yeah the the the folks that did the uh penal transplant

00:20:06.120 you know not too long ago i'm just was what did the military research play any role in oh you know

00:20:13.600 i don't know whether the mass general team had any defense department funding that i don't know the

00:20:19.240 answer to that so one thing i didn't think about i thought was interesting was uh the research that

00:20:24.160 the military military does with hearing yeah and hearing loss and um so there's two problems there

00:20:30.780 so like you want to prevent hearing loss because soldiers are around loud stuff all the time

00:20:35.860 guns explosions helicopters jet engines but whenever you uh put on earplugs like then it they can't hear

00:20:43.980 what's going on around them yeah um so what are the what are what's the military doing to overcome

00:20:49.440 that problem there is a pretty cool thing called t caps tactical communication and protection system

00:20:58.280 which i've tried on and i want a pair because you could eavesdrop on people on the subway like across

00:21:03.880 the car and they wouldn't know but it's what it's kind of cool it's this headset uh it's got

00:21:09.960 communications built in so you can communicate wirelessly with someone overhead in a helicopter

00:21:14.580 or someone back at the base or just the other people in your unit who are 40 feet away from you

00:21:20.200 um and it so it selectively amplifies quiet sounds like a human voice and it mitigates loud noise

00:21:31.040 like it it it takes noises kind of processes them and reproduces them either quieter if they're loud

00:21:37.280 or louder if they're soft and it it just makes all the difference because um nobody you know if a

00:21:46.280 firefight breaks out if things go kinetic as they say in the military the last thing you're worried

00:21:51.380 about is like oh where's my hearing here where's my hearing protection i gotta get you know you're not

00:21:55.820 that's a little laughing on your mind uh so um and you can't predict when the loud noise is going

00:22:02.400 to happen and nobody's going to wear hearing protection for six hours on patrol there's not

00:22:08.320 going to wear that stuff because it they lose their situational awareness they can't tell a car

00:22:13.640 driving up behind them or somebody saying something to them from 20 feet away so um they're not going

00:22:19.940 to wear it even though they're given it so um everybody should have this system and be great

00:22:25.360 obviously it's it's expensive and it's you know the priority has been special operations teams and

00:22:32.000 people who need it most but um hopefully everyone who needs it will soon get it yeah i mean one of the

00:22:40.880 the hearing loss issue like i never thought about that but like that is a problem like i think you

00:22:45.060 talked about how uh i think it was a seal saying like he was with a bunch of his buddies like this

00:22:49.920 is like the thing i hate the most like we're sitting at a table and like we can't hear each

00:22:53.820 other trying to have a conversation yeah at dinner time or when we talk we have to like yell at each

00:22:58.240 other yeah exactly and he said yeah because he goes you know i was talking to him i was asking a lot

00:23:04.580 of questions because you know he's a um i believe he was a sniper i wasn't entirely sure but i was

00:23:10.800 asking him stuff about that and then you know he said this is this is the hardest part and i thought

00:23:16.700 he was talking about like you know people and their stupid assumptions and questions i'm like yeah

00:23:20.920 i get it and it turned out he was talking about a loud restaurant because it was a dinner and there

00:23:27.460 are a lot of people in a small room he's like you look around look at these guys you can see them

00:23:31.820 they'll start to just go uh-huh uh-huh you know just nod and they'll withdraw from the conversation

00:23:36.380 because they can't hear anything yeah and that could also influence you know things like ptsd or

00:23:42.680 some of the emotional trauma that might because they they can't talk they can't communicate with

00:23:46.640 the outside world so yeah as you said they they turn inward yeah yeah exactly and you feel i i would

00:23:52.420 imagine you feel isolated enough coming back from an intense scenario like special operations or any

00:23:58.580 deployment really you feel apart from the average everyday people who surround you and now you

00:24:05.660 also can't really hear what they're saying in a in a loud room or you know even in a quiet room uh

00:24:12.220 so you i would think you'd be even more isolated and depressed so yeah i would think it it's um

00:24:18.880 kind of a uh force multiplier as they say right um so another um section you devoted the book to is this

00:24:28.580 the military's uh expensive research project during world war ii and it's developing the perfect stink

00:24:35.920 bomb basically is what they were trying to do and i mean the amount of money they spent on this

00:24:40.280 is i mean i forgot what it was in today's like over 100 million dollars and today today's dollar value

00:24:46.360 um why did they spend so much money on an object used by ninth grade pranksters

00:24:52.040 um it was actually the oss precursor to the cia so you have to blame them right for this one um i think

00:25:01.900 because they could because they had a big budget and it was um the research director's pet project

00:25:09.420 i think he thought this is quick and easy and it's something with something to specifically for

00:25:16.640 it wasn't really a you know i called the chat i made a reference to stink bombs in the title of the

00:25:20.540 chapter but it was actually a stink paste and a little stink spray or paste that you would squeeze

00:25:25.780 on onto the surreptitiously as a citizen in an occupied country like france say you would sidle up

00:25:32.620 to some german officer and spray this stuff on his uniform um and the idea was to humiliate and

00:25:39.840 ostracize him to ruin his morale so it was just it was looked upon as a simple and cheap thing to get

00:25:46.360 into the hands of motivated citizens and occupied countries it didn't turn out to be simple or cheap

00:25:53.700 um a tremendous amount of work first of all they had to figure out what is the most dastardly awful

00:25:59.860 scent the original idea was something that would smell of a very loose bowel movement to quote stanley

00:26:05.380 level the oss research director uh that morphed into something um they wanted they changed it to

00:26:14.020 make it something unfamiliar you know horrible but unfamiliar which would be sort of also bewildering

00:26:19.440 and alarming so people think wow wow that that man really smells horrible and scary but then and then

00:26:25.420 they had all these problems with the delivery system um there was backfire there was dribble uh there

00:26:30.620 was leakage in the warehouse there was all manner of uh and so there's just rounds and rounds of

00:26:35.740 testing and reformulating and redoing the packaging and in the end they never deployed they never used

00:26:43.700 them they were in the catalog and actually kind of amazed me that there was a oss had a catalog i would

00:26:49.320 have loved to see that i couldn't find any copies of the oss gadget catalog but they apparently there was a

00:26:55.780 big demand for it they made i think 200 of them never deployed them never got them out because

00:27:01.500 17 days after the final report the bomb was dropped on hiroshima and that was the end of the war

00:27:07.560 so and i tried to find a tube a remaining tube i think they probably are somewhere at aberdeen proving

00:27:14.640 ground somebody said they ended up but uh i didn't have any luck with those folks uh locating

00:27:19.460 any samples however the uh however the monel chemical census center did have a sample of it

00:27:27.920 for me to to smell and it's pretty awful it smells bad kind of a yeah it's pretty awful it's yeah i

00:27:35.480 mean you wouldn't want that sprayed on your jacket right the other interesting thing i thought about

00:27:38.860 the research with trying to find the stink that would demoralize people was the other thing they ran

00:27:45.000 into is like some cultures like found like putrid smells actually that smells pretty good like uh

00:27:51.400 sewage yeah like people in mexico are like yeah that kind of reminds me it's it's a pleasant smell

00:27:57.100 or vomit like okay that's great yeah and then one of the questions they had they'd say do you know

00:28:03.640 it was very specific do you find this scent to be and and one of the options was wearable and edible

00:28:10.200 and for dirty feet vomit sewage there'd be at least three to ten percent in a lot in various cultures

00:28:18.460 who would say yeah yeah i'd i'd wear that as a perfume yeah yeah kind of like that yeah so to find

00:28:25.860 something that was universally loathed and feared um was a challenge they ended up with uh

00:28:31.700 u.s government standard bathroom malodor which was a chemical compound developed to test

00:28:39.120 latrine deodorants you know you needed something that approximated a field latrine this was in world

00:28:45.440 war ii you needed something that smelled that bad so that they could test the deodorizers so that was

00:28:51.860 the winner that almost every culture couldn't bear for every culture found it not only off-putting

00:28:58.500 but scary yeah so um okay yeah so that in in more recent stink malodorant non-lethal weapons work

00:29:07.260 that's been the one they started with and then they doctored it up with a few other

00:29:10.840 compounds and then do they do they use stink bombs today in the military at all or um you know the

00:29:19.360 um 1998 was the the pride the project where they were looking for the universal um universally loathed

00:29:27.680 scent and um monel chemical census center did this work they came up with something called stench soup

00:29:33.340 i have a sample in my closet that i haven't dared to open in a box in a tube double bagged um

00:29:42.100 but uh i asked the researcher pam dalton what has the military done with this it's it's a your

00:29:50.440 basic non-lethal weapon as in um clear terrain uh get people out of a compound disperse a mob you

00:29:57.280 know it's that kind of a device you can also use loud noise and you know flash you know flash

00:30:03.760 bang bombs you know there's there's various ways to do it i don't know where they've deployed this

00:30:09.580 stench suit she's she didn't either she said i gave it i gave them the formula and what they did with

00:30:14.480 it i don't know okay so i don't know if it's used okay um so and then the other area you talk about

00:30:22.460 in the book is sleep this has been i guess the military has researched a lot about sleep because

00:30:27.160 the one hand yeah they they want their soldiers to be able to go without sleep um for you know

00:30:33.220 because sometimes battles can go on for more than 24 hours but at the same time sleep degrades

00:30:38.780 performance significantly so what's the research going on there are the military is the military

00:30:43.740 trying to figure out ways to allow soldiers to go without sleep but still maintain peak performance

00:30:48.980 uh for for for a long time up until quite recently there was a lot of work into all alternatives to

00:30:58.400 caffeine like um compounds that might enable someone to stay awake without degrading performance

00:31:05.940 and they didn't really come up with anything there's that right now the drug of the drug of

00:31:11.480 currency is uh caffeine that's that's where we're at after all these years they haven't so there was work

00:31:18.160 you know there's something called oh i'm going to mispronounce is it modafinil because i didn't

00:31:21.980 really yeah exactly yeah uh exactly nobody and i don't know exactly whether it just wasn't doing

00:31:28.980 what it was supposed to do or whether there are side effects but you don't hear about modafinil much

00:31:33.100 now uh it's it's it's caffeine and it's coffee and red bull so and they they and the other the

00:31:39.320 priority now has kind of shifted to let's try to protect sleep let's try let's let's find ways to work

00:31:46.780 sleep into a soldier's schedule whether it's like power naps or yeah and also there's been some work

00:31:55.560 on you know because circadian rhythm is interesting and the young young people's when they're awake when

00:32:01.580 they're awake and when they're sleepy it shifts over the decades like when you're a teenager or in

00:32:07.780 your 20s you tend to be you know wide awake till midnight one in the morning and you want to you

00:32:13.240 you want to sleep until nine or ten and when you're in your 60s and 70s you know you're nodding

00:32:17.860 off at nine o'clock and waking up at five so um and unfortunately the military tends to have early

00:32:23.900 wake-up calls whether it's you know boot camp or combat you're getting up at dawn or earlier so

00:32:29.760 uh it's been really hard for young men and women because it you know they're not they're just not built

00:32:37.400 for that schedule so there's been some work done um making you know pushing the wake-up call

00:32:43.140 during training um a little bit later allowing them to stay up a little later and sleep a little

00:32:49.520 later yeah because they're going to stay up anyway they're all like just lying in their bunks wide awake

00:32:53.680 on their smartphones smartphones exactly i mean but you did mention like i guess they they thought about

00:33:00.960 this idea like there's some animals that um can um stay awake like one part of their brain stays awake

00:33:08.180 while the other part sleeps like i guess ducks do this uh they can keep an eye out and so they thought

00:33:13.240 well maybe we can somehow do something where we can get soldiers to be able to do that well that was a

00:33:18.520 darpa idea that was a darpa tends to be just the outside the box futuristic brainstorming entity and

00:33:27.540 there was a paper i came across that talked about you know what ways could we modify the human body

00:33:32.940 what way could we get we learn something from research onto animals into animals um and could we

00:33:39.560 apply this in any way and one of the things they talked about was animals that sleep with one hemisphere

00:33:44.520 of the brain and and are alert with the other like marine mammals because they have to swim to the surface

00:33:49.700 to breathe they're that while they sleep they're still doing that so they've got part of the brain awake

00:33:56.020 and uh some ducks and geese i think it was also geese uh they all sleep in a group and they the ones on

00:34:02.680 the perimeter seem to be sleeping with half the brain and looking out for predators with the other half

00:34:08.500 so you know somebody mentioned like oh i've really cut the connector between the brain so that people

00:34:13.120 actually have independently functioning brains and we could train them um but nobody's advocating doing

00:34:20.080 that at this point it was just darpa funded some research um

00:34:23.980 into the mechanism uh in these creatures so darpa being darpa it went darpa being defense

00:34:34.480 what does darpa stand for defense advanced research

00:34:38.820 authority i don't know i've dealt with darpa very little darpa is you know initially when i started the

00:34:44.600 book i thought i will be living at darpa but darpa is kind of an office that funds university work

00:34:52.240 they don't really have their own their own labs labs and yeah they're so they they fund various

00:34:58.060 things a lot of it out of the realm of what i was covering you know yeah you were covering sort

00:35:03.600 of more like weapons yeah you were covering more of like the everyday stuff that affects soldiers right

00:35:09.900 the human experience exactly the kind of a human experience of deployment and combat yeah well

00:35:17.360 mary and yeah right the right now yeah yeah well mary this has been a great conversation um where can

00:35:22.320 people learn more about grunt oh they well they're uh just website maryroach.net but there's tons of

00:35:31.080 uh articles and reviews uh on the internet they could check out or just go blindly buy a copy

00:35:38.820 yeah all right go to amazon just click now buy now all right well mary roach thank you so much

00:35:45.200 for your time it's been a pleasure you bet my pleasure my guest today was mary roach she's the

00:35:51.060 author of the book grunt the curious science of humans at war it's available on amazon.com and

00:35:55.500 bookstores everywhere and also make sure to check out the show notes at aom.is slash grunt

00:36:00.700 where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:36:04.000 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:36:19.140 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com and if you enjoy the show

00:36:23.840 i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher helps us out a lot as always thank you

00:36:28.680 for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - September 16, 2016

#235： The Curious Science of War

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